Trauma is an adaptation, not a disorder.
When we experience a conditioned reactive pattern, in other words a trauma trigger if we are present and sensitive enough we will feel our system contract in the moment the pattern arises.
We will feel our body tense up against the experience. We will notice our clarity leave, our perception become veiled, dense emotions arise, fight flight or freeze response gets activated, and we instantly feel shut down and cut off and want to run or react.
Our nervous system adapts to circumstances that we experience through out our lives. If we are in circumstances where we continuously feel unsafe, feel abused, feel unloved our whole system slowly adapts to these circumstances. We adapt to feeling unsafe, and our system gets wired to look for danger. When triggered, these conditioned patterns arise and can be unbelievably painful.
Notice that even a thought can be a trigger, nothing has to happen externally for a spontaneous thought to arise about a person/place/event from the past and the body reacts with a trauma response, and then we are lost in a cascade of thoughts and emotions maybe for hours and hours on end when nothing really has even happened.
To live in continuous trauma response is to live in hell. I know this because I have been there. Its important to bring awareness to these triggers, know your triggers, know your thought patterns, know the contractions. Be aware of them as you cannot begin to heal that which you cannot see.
It may be to much to ask for you to stay present in the moment they arise, that takes a lot of mindfulness/awareness practice as a prerequisite. But the more you practice in your own time, the more you can be with yourself when your by yourself then the more you will be able to hold the same space whilst in relationship with others.
Some people I work with have never once entered the present moment, their whole lives have been driven by avoiding meeting themselves. Why? Because if I enter the present moment there I am, and I then have to meet myself, and I then meet my pain, I meet my trauma.
So its helpful to understand that it will take time, and it will take a willingness to slowly and gently begin to meet yourself. Find a practitioner you feel safe with, and work with them one on one. Slowly begin to meet all these parts of yourself and reintegrate them.
We are rewiring our nervous system and our body from the habitual patterns of fear, terror, guilt, shame, pain and deficiency based identities to one of wholeness and presence.
Go Gently,
Matt Nettleton
Senior KI Facilitator and Trainer
www.mattnettleton.com